Raised by powerful women in a restrictive, sheltered Christian community in New England, Ryan Dostie never imagined herself on the front lines of a war halfway around the world. But then a conversation with an Army recruiter in her high-school cafeteria changed the course of her life. Hired as a linguist, she quickly had to find a space for herself in the testosterone-filled world of the Army barracks, and had been holding her own until the unthinkable happened: she was raped by a fellow soldier.
Struggling with PTSD and commanders who didn’t trust her story, Dostie found herself fighting through the isolation of trauma amid the challenges of an unexpected war. Dostie tells her story in the new book, Formation: A Woman's Memoir of Stepping Out of Line.
